Best of

the Twin Cities

Best Local Comp

Ecstattic Forever

Ali Jaafar might have the most exciting attic in Minneapolis. The top floor of his home is where the Hollow Boys frontman/recording engineer keeps Ecstattic Studio, a professional recording space in which dozens of bands around town have captured their self-funded albums. To document its 2015 work, the studio released Ecstattic Forever, the fifth in a series of compilations that collect tunes recorded, mixed, and mastered by Jaafar. Like a post-rock ice cream shop, Ecstattic Forever samples every flavor of DIY guitar music, from the psychedelic grunge-pop of Lunch Duchess' "Cry" to the shadowy doomgaze of Elliot Reed and Yume Nikki's collaboration "Frozen." The comp's 16 tracks — including cuts by Strange Relations, Joey Joey Michaels, and Ego Death — define Jaafar's "artist-fi" recording style, which, as he puts it, captures "however dirty, clean, wet, dry, big, small, or whatever the song (and its composers) require."